The countries in the Subregion, though geographically linked have such different histories, political and media environments. One common factor is their thirst for improvement and their openness to non-traditional ways to develop the region.

Seven men and seven women journalists from the Mekong Region took up this challenge and crossed the sea to gather in the Philippines for the "Imaging the Mekong Documentary Fellowship" conducted by the Probe Media Foundation, funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and The Japan Foundation. Their goal was to create video documentaries for the development of the region.

The Fellowship begun with a month-long training seminar and workshop administered by the most respected and award-winning journalists, broadcasters and filmmakers in the Philippines and Asia. Lectures and exercises were on scriptwriting, interviewing, videography techniques, editing, investigative journalism and critiquing. Experts and advocates on issues such as tourism, migration and anthropology and social development in the Mekong were also invited to share their experiences and research to enlighten the Fellows on the issues and concerns of the region. All this prepared the Fellows for the creation of their own pieces.

The fellows crossed the sea once more to return to their countries with a five-month timetable and sub-grants to create documentaries on cross-border issues. Over the course of the production period, the Fellows were in constant contact with the Probe Media Foundation in the Philippines through emails and telephone calls, finalizing topic outlines, scripts and edits.

The finished documentaries were written in the Fellows' own languages and subtitled in English. Their topics ranged from the environmental effects of the Vietnam fishing villages on Cambodia, the impact of Thai media on Lao culture, smuggling and child labor from Cambodia to Thailand, the eradication of drugs and the drug problem between China and Myanmar and trafficking of women from Vietnam to Cambodia.

The Fellowship culminated in a Joint Media Forum and Peer Review in Bangkok, Thailand in February 2004 where the Fellows' documentaries will be previewed and evaluated by media professionals. It was in cooperation with the Inter Press Service (IPS) whose fellowship "Our Mekong" trains print and photojournalists on in-depth reporting on cross-border issues in the Mekong. The forum was a good venue for sharing of experiences and enriching the network of media professionals concerned about developing the region by addressing cross-border issues. Imaging the Mekong documentaries will be scheduled to air over their television stations in the region and copies are to be distributed to the region.

The documentaries created provide real, current, and relevant images and sounds of the Mekong in these significant times.

These documentaries not only aims to widen the expertise of the region's journalists and filmmakers but are expected to stir the interest and appeal to the region's governments, policy makers and organization leaders to move and do something about the problems presented.

The Fellows attest that in the fellowship, new lessons were learned, skills were improved and friendships across borders were forged. The giant leaps across the sea to the Philippines were essential in objectively looking at their region and claiming it as their own. They say that it didn't matter whether you were Lao, Thai, Cambodian, Vietnamese, Burmese or Chinese. They knew they belonged to the same region and had to work together in order to become competent videographers, reporters, writers and producers of reports across the borders, for the development of a Greater Mekong Sub-region.